Glass. " D S ? 5 
Book L_ 



E DEAD LANDS 
OF EUROPE 



J, W. HEADLAM 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 

MOMXTll 

PRICB THUBEPeNCB. 



/ 



THE DEAD LANDS 
OF EUROPE 

BY TTn 

J. W. HEADLAM 'Wbuj 



HODDER 

LONDON 



AND STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK TORONTO 

MCMSVII 



I. 



THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 

Across the continent of Africa, from the Red Sea 
to Cape Verde, for nearly 4000 miles, there lies a 
desert band of death and desolation. Across the 
continent of Europe, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, 
there runs a similar band of death — not physical but 
national, states, nations, and peoples broken up, 
wrecked, and destroyed^ — for more than 1000 miles. 
The traveller finds his way up great rivers such as 
the Vistula, destined to be the highway of a T\ation, 
over the mountains and forests of the Carpathians, 
down to the valley of the Danube and the shores of 
the Adriatic — a country well adapted by the blessings 
of nature to take its place among the great centres 
of national life and civilisation. But throughout his 
journey he will hnd himself among m.en who are 
deprived of those primary rights of national existence 
and self-government which others enjoy ; throughout 
the whole course of his journey he will find himself 
among those whose nation, whose tongue, often 
whose religion, is unrecognised and oppressed. If, 
in the course of his journey, he looked on a map 
and asked in what country he was, he would find 
that it is now Prussia, now Russia, now Austria ; but 
if he asked the men among whom he found himself 
they would give a different answer — they would tell 
him. that they are Poles, that they are Czechs^ that 
they are Roumanians, that they are South Slavs. 
But the statesmen and the diplomatists and the 

[ B] 



2 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



rulers of the country would tell him, e.g., that there 
is no such country as Poland, that they are the 
Polish subjects of the King of Prussia, of the Emperor 
of Austria, or (till a few weeks ago) of the Czar of 
all the Russias. 

Have any of my readers ever thought what this 
means ? The United States of America have been 
founded to maintain the principle of government of 
the people by the people for the people. There 
may be populations so ignorant and untrained in 
political matters that they are unable to profit by a 
complete system of democratic government, and 
they may require a transition stage in which the 
government is in strong hands ; but there is no 
nation so ignorant that it does not require that its 
own prosperity should be the first object of its 
rulers, and no nation which does not demand com- 
plete and full recognition of its own customs, of its 
own language, and of its own religion. Have you 
ever considered what it means that the peasant 
when he goes into a Court of Justice is allowed at 
the best only on sufferance to use his own language ; 
that the schools to which his children are sent may 
be used to destroy in them the remembrance of the 
great deeds of their own ancestors and to substitute 
for them the language and the traditions of an alien 
and conquering race ? You know something of 
what the English nation suffered under the rule of 
the Norman Conquerors. That which at this moment 
is being endured in Eastern Europe is in many 
ways infinitely worse. The Normans never inter- 
fered in the home life of the English ; they never 
called upon the English to go to war outside the 



THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 3 



bounds of the kingdom and to risk their Hves in a 
quarrel which was not their own. What these 
nations have to meet is not merely the carelessness 
and indifference of a superior social class, but the 
steady, deliberate, and continued efforts of highly 
organised governments to obliterate from the earth 
the very memory of their existence. 

That which these nations — the Poles, the Bohe- 
mians, the Southern Slavs — claim is in fact the right 
to exist, the right to a full expression of their own 
nationality in literature, in art, in their internal 
government and in their international relations. One 
would have thought that the claim had only to be 
made for everyone to accede to it. Surely in political 
life the murder of a nation is the greatest of crimes. 
It is perhaps difficult for those who live many 
thousands of miles away in the Western World to 
understand, not the justice of the claim — for that 
must in truth be obvious to all — but the necessity for 
enforcing it. But the danger is no imaginary one. Of 
these Slavonic peoples some have in fact been crushed 
out of existence. The whole of Germa.ny east of the 
Elbe was in former days inhabited by peoples whose 
verv names have disappeared from Europe, and a 
hundred years ago it seem.ed as if the same fate had 
befallen the Bohemians and would befall the South 
Slavonic peoples. They were being slowly crushed 
by the predominance of their German neighbours, 
swamped by the immigration of German colonists, 
absorbed into the neighbouring German States. ^ But 
for the last hundred years, and in fact since the time 
of the French Revolution, a reaction against this 
process has taken place, and the question at issue, 

[ B 2 ] 



4 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



which should be determined by this war, is whether 
the forces of Germanisation or those of national 
reaction will be successful. 

In this great controversy, the greatest in its 
nature of which history has any record, we might 
well call on the Germans to bear testimony on our 
side. It would be well that they should in the days 
of their prosperity remember certain aspects of their 
past history. There was a time when Germany 
occupied, relatively to France, a position somewhat 
similar to that which these Slavonic states now occupy 
relatively to Germany. Germany at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century had no real political unity. 
Owing to. political disunion and internal warfare it had 
lost its national self-consciousness ; it was divided 
between three Christian confessions and split up 
into hundreds of small principalities. To the west 
of them were the French, united under a powerful 
and aggressive ruler ; their culture, their language, 
their institutions dominated Europe. Germany 
seemed indeed to have no message for the 
world. It was the highest ambition of their men 
of letters, statesmen, courtiers, and kings to 
show them.selves capable of imJtating what they 
learned from their Western neighbours. The rest 
of the world was rapidly coming to look on at least 
Western Germany as an appendage of France. It 
was inconceivable that an ordinary man of science 
or letters or of affairs should trouble to learn 
German. German towns were known to the rest of 
Europe by their French names ; to this day indeed 
we speak of Cologne and Mayence and Aix la 
Chapelle, not of Koln and Mainz and Aachen. The 



THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



very memory of the great days of medieval Germany 
had been lost ; the very existence, for instance, of 
the Niehelungeiilied, now the treasured epic of 
the Germans, was not known. It might well look 
as though Germany was destined eventually to be 
absorbed into the superior Latin culture, the German 
language to survive merely as the local dialect of 
the peasants ; it was being relegated to the same 
position which English for a time held under the 
Norman Kings. 

And then the great change came. The German 
nation became again conscious of itself. By an 
unparalleled national effort it once more gained 
touch with its own past. A great school of German 
letters and German science was founded. German 
once more established itself as one of the essential 
elements in Western European culture, and this 
intellectual and spiritual revival was inevitably 
followed by the political regeneration of the country, 
for the Germans soon saw, and rightly saw, that the 
preservation and development of their owq culture 
was impossible without political unity. 

What they did then is what these Slavonic races 
are doing now. They have for the last hundred 
years been recalling the great achievements of their 
own past ; they are giving expression in art, in 
learning:, and in literature to the thouorhts and 
aspirations which spring spontaneously from them ; 
they claim to be heard speaking in their own voice 
and not through the medium of Germany. They 
ask us to think of their own towns, not under the 
disguise of a foreign and German name, and they 
know that these aspirations cannot be fulfilled unless 



6 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



they gain complete political self-government. It is 
indeed one of the true tragedies of history that the 
German nation had not the greatness of soul and 
the generosity of mind to extend to these nations, 
rightly struggling to be free, the sympathy and 
admiration which they have claimed for themselves 



II. 



POLAND. 

Among those lands of which I spoke in my last 
chapter the first place must be assigned to Poland — 
Poland the Niobe of nations. Let us be frank. In 
the political world, among statesmen and diplo- 
matists, the name of Poland calls up no pleasing 
recollections. How could it do so ? For during the 
last three generations the word " Pole " has called 
to our minds exiles, men holding often precarious 
positions in foreign countries, full — -as exiles will 
always be — of fantastic and unrealisable schemes, 
subterranean diplomacy, intrigues — and intrigues 
directed as often against one another as against 
the common enemy of their race. And in their 
own country in Eastern Europe the word " Poland'^ 
implied a problem — a problem to which there 
appeared to be no solution, for every solution 
must mean the complete overthrow of the estab- 
lished European system. It was to throw the apple 
of discord into the relations of kings and states — a 
problem which indeed could not be solved without 
a fundamental change, not only in the external 
relations, but the internal government of Russia, 
of Austria, of Prussia. 

It is the duty, and it is nearly always the object, 
of diplomatists to avoid war. In 1815, in 1830, in 
1848, in 1863 the Polish question brought Europe 
to the verge of war, and since 1863 it is one on 
which the rulers of the world have deliberately and 
perhaps wisely been silent. But now things are 
changed ; that great war which nearly all had 



8 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



striven to avoid has come, and is it not reasonable 
to hope that there may be secured from the ruin of 
the world at least the avoidance of the perpetuation 
of a state of things which would inevitably in the 
future bring about again a similar catastrophe ? 

When we speak of Poland we think of the 
Poland and the Poles whom we know ourselves — • 
weak, helpless, divided. But let us remember 
that there was an older Poland, one which occupied 
in Europe a position among the greatest of 
monarchies. Five hundred years ago the Kings 
of Poland held a great place among the rulers 
of Europe. Two hundred and fifty years ago 
a Turkish army stood before the gates of Vienna. 
The great imperial city, the guardian of Christendom 
and civilisation, was beleaguered by the hosts of 
the infidel and the barbarian. If it fell, a flood of 
desolation would sweep over Central Europe. 
Whence could help come ? It came, and the saviour 
was John Sobieski, King of Poland. And the next 
Sunday, in the Cathedral of Vienna,' the preacher 
took as his text, " There was a man sent from God, 
and his name was John." But now there is no King 
of Poland ; there is no Poland. Fifty years ago 
Metternich said he had no knowledge of Italy — 
Italy was merely a geographical expression. Poland 
is not even a geographical expression. There are 
the Polish provinrces of Prussia, there is Galicia, 
there is the district of the Vistula. Poland is dead, 
the monarchy is gone ; you can see the jewels of 
the Polish crown preserved in a museum in a 
German city; you can see the tombs of the kings 
and recall the past greatness of the kingdom in the 



POLAND. 



9 



churches at Cracow, the ancient capital. But Poland 
is rent asunder. It has been divided between three 
great monarchies, by which its territory was sur- 
rounded ; but the memory of the crime has not been 
effaced in the history of Europe, and Europe will 
never be at peace or at rest until there has been 
reparation and restoration. The final judgment on 
it has been given by one of the participants. Maria 
Theresa of Austria wrote : When all my lands were 
invaded, and I knew not where in the world I should 
find a place to be brought to bed in, I relied on my 
good right and the help of God. But in this thing, 
where not only public law^ cries to Heaven against 
us, but also all natural justice and sound reason, I 
must bonfess never in my life to have been in such 
Trouble, and am ashamed to show my face." 

The hour for which the world has waited so long 
has now come, and at last the diplomacy of Europe 
has mentioned the word Poland. The first word 
was spoken by the ruler of that country which has 
enjoyed for a hundred years the larger share of the 
booty. The Czar proclaimed that Poland should 
be restored, and his Allies have taken note of the 
words and embodied this in their proposals for terms 
of peace. It is a word which has not been lightly 
spoken and cannot be recalled. The President of 
the United States has also taken note of it and has 
specifically stated that an autonomous and indepen- 
dent Poland must be a part of any new system to 
which he and the American nation are to give their 
guarantee. 

When the Peace Congress meets, one of the first 
questions to be asked will be — What of Poland ? 



lo THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



How it will be answered we do not know. If the 
solution is to be not a passing subterfuge to escape 
from the embarrassments of the moment but a 
permanent establishment, through which the relations 
of states may be based on peace and goodwill, not 
on conquest and aggrandisement and oppression, 
then we know this — all those districts in which the 
population is predominantly Polish must be separated 
from the states to which they now belong. No 
partial or incomplete restoration will be sufficient. 
Prussia must give up her Polish provinces ; Austria 
must contribute as her share the Pohsh districts of 
Galicia, and they must be joined with the nucleus 
of Polish lands w^hich have been acquired by the 
Russian Empire. For if there are left lands 
unredeemed then they will surely remain a source of 
poison ; they will be a festering sore which will produce 
inflammation and disease, i.e., agitation, conspiracy, 
intrigue, and war. This new Poland m_ust be a self- 
governing community. It will be for them to determine 
w^hether the head of their state should bear the title of 
King; in Europe many of us still like to have our kings. 
But our kings must be men of the same nation, the 
same language, the same religion as ourselves ; they 
must be not an autocratic ruler imposed on us from 
outside, but the symbol of the unity of the nation. 
Poland must have its own parliament, and King and 
parliament, working in harmony with one another, 
must give to Poland those laws which the Polish 
nation desires, and must allow the free opportunity 
for that unrestrained play of parties and of pro- 
grammes without which no nation can become 
conscious of that which it really desires. 



POLAND. 



What place will Poland take in the international 
system of Europe ? It is too soon to answer this 
question, but it is not too soon to express the hope 
that the Russian nation will be capable eventually 
of a supreme act of generosity — that they will say : 
This great nation, this Holy Russia, with its tens of 
thousands of square m.iles of contiguous territory, 
with its millions oi inhabitants, which com.prises half 
Europe and half Asia, united as no other nation is 
united by an intensity of national and religious con- 
sciousness, has no need to rule over other unwilling 
dependencies. There may be a period of transition, 
when the Polish nation — weak, divided by more than 
a century of living death — is unable to stand upon its 
own feet. But, looking into the future, we can see 
the day when the Polish King, crowned at Cracow 
and ruling at Warsaw, joining under his sceptre all 
the Polish lands which border the banks of the 
Vistula, and enjoying what has been long denied 
— access to the sea at that great port of Danzig — 
will take his place, owing subjection and suzerainty 
to no man, as the full and complete equal of the 
other rulers of a free and independent Europe. Or 
instead of a kingdom there may be a Republic. 

And what hitherto has been but a vague hope and 
a distant aspiration now seems on the verge of 
fulfilment. The Russian autocracy has fallen, and 
that great event, by which freedom is given to the 
Russian nation, will also give freedom to the other 
races allied to Russia under a common despotism. 
Those generous feelings by which the Revolution 
was brought about, and which it will nourish in 
the future, cannot be confined to Russia alone. 



12 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



Already the decree has gone out that the Poles 
shall, by free elections, choose a constituent assembly 
to decide the future of their own race. We may 
now hope that a free Russia, united to a free 
Europe, will in fact undo the wrong committed 
by Russian despotism in alliance with Prussia and 
Austria. 



III. 



BOHEMIA. 

In my last chapter I spoke of Poland ; but Poland 
is not the only kingdom which has been destroyed. 
Far back in the Middle Ages there was a kingdom 
of Bohemia ; we know it, and you know it because 
you will have read in your history of England of the 
blind King of Bohemia who fought on the field 
of Crecy, and whose device of three ostrich 
feathers and motto Ich dien (I serve) are still 
the device and motto of the Prince of Wales. 
There was a King of Bohemia ; there is one no 
longer. There was a Bohemian nation ; that too 
we ought to know well, because the Bohemian 
nation gave us the first beginnings of that to 
which at least Protestant England and Protestant 
America owe their present faith. The religious 
history of English Protestantism goes back to 
Wycliffe, whom we call the morning star of the 
Reformation ; but WycHffe himself had received 
the impulse and inspiration from abroad^ from the 
distant Bohemian nation. Bohemia had given 
to England a Queen, the wife of Richard II., 
and with her came the knowledge of the new 
teaching of John Huss. Huss was the first of 
the Protestants, and from the Bohemian nation 
sprang the beginnings of the reformed faith. But 
Huss w^as not only a great religious teacher ; he 
was also a great patriot. The religious movement 
which he led was only part of a great national 
movement for establishing the full freedom of the 
Czech nation, which was already being crushed 



14 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



by the superior forces of the Germans. It was 
opposed less as a religious than as a national 
movement. A century later the German nation 
acclaimed Luther, and has never since then ceased 
to acclaim him as the real founder of modem 
Germanism. For a similar national movement in 
another race they had then, as they have now, no 
sympathy. And so Huss was burned — burned at a 
great council held on German soil under a German 
Emperor, and a death similar to that which came 
upon their great leader fell also upon the Bohemian 
nation. And more than two centuries later, in the 
great war which was fought on the soil of Europe 
for religious liberty, the first blow was directed by 
the House of Austria against the people of Bohemia. 
They were defeated and crushed, their English Queen 
was driven to be a wanderer on the face of the 
earth, and from that time the name and nation of 
the Bohemians— or, as they called themselves, the 
Czechs — were wiped out, as it seemed for ever, from 
the map of Europe. It was the same House of Austria, 
the same armies, the same generals, who, at the same 
time, tried to crush out the reformed religion and 
the new national spirit of Germany. In Germany 
they only half succeeded. A new Germany has arisen 
in opposition to the house of Austria ; but now Ger- 
man Nationalism, which should have been inspired 
with the true spirit of liberty, has combined with it? 
ancient enemy, and conspires with it to hold Bohemia 
in permanent bondage. But we know how difificult it 
is to destroy the spirit of life. The seeds that had 
been buried ages ago in some forgotten tomb will 
spring up when brought into contact with the sun 



BOHEMIA. 



IS 



and the wind and the rain, and when the spirit of 
Hberty, which had always been nourished in England 
and found its voice in America and in France, was 
transplanted by the Revolution to the East of Europe, 
the spirit of the Bohemian nation, warmed and watered 
by it, sprang again to life. 

For seventy years a great struggle has been 
taking place, little heard of in Western Europe. 
Many centuries ago the Bohemians had chosen as 
their Kings the Dukes, who have now become the 
Emperors, of Austria. It was a free offer of a crown ; 
all they asked for in return was the maintenance of 
their national institutions and defence against foreign 
enemies. The latter was given, the former was 
neglected. Among the titles which the Austrian 
Emperor holds one of the first is that of King of 
Bohemia; but this title remains a mere name. Bohemia 
was a titular kingdom ; they have demanded, and 
demanded in vain, that their king should come to 
Prague and there assume the ancient crown of King 
Wenceslas. This promise was given, but like many 
other promises it was broken. Something indeed the 
nation has succeeded in winning : the struggles of 
two generations had brought it about that the Czech 
language should be used and recognised officially in 
the government of the country ; they had their own 
Assembly, which had many rights in internal matters, 
but was still subject in essential things to the 
supremacy of the Central Parliament and the Imperial 
offices, which were situated at Vienna, and were, as 
they must be, predominantly German in spirit. 

The new Charter of Liberties for Europe cannot 
neglect this nation which has struggled so bravely 



i6 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



for its existence. How terrible is their situation 
at the present moment! In the great war, which 
has become a war between the Teutonic and the 
Slavonic nations, their sympathies cannot but be 
with those who are of one blood and kindred speech. 
But they have no voice in determining their own 
policy. There is no Bohemian Foreign Minister, 
there is no Bohemian Minister of War, there is no 
Bohemian army ; there are only regiments in the 
Austro- Hungarian army. They have not even the 
freedom which Russia gives to the Finns, who are 
exempt from service in the army ; they have not the 
liberty of voluntary service which we give to the 
Irish. And so the Czech citizens and peasants have 
been called from their homes, placed under German 
commanders, and driven forth to fight in a cause 
which they detest, and in every Czech regiment sent 
to the front there are incorporated 40 per cent, of 
Germans and Magyars to watch and control them. 
The true history of this tragedy will perhaps never 
be known. We do know that hundreds of the 
leaders of the nation are languishing in jail, many 
of them under a sentence of death, and that others 
have found safety in fiight and are eating out their 
souls in exile. We do know that w^hole res^iments 
have passed, or tried to pass, over on the field of 
battle to those whom they cannot look upon as their 
enemies. Of these some have been destroyed, 
literally annihilated ; others, if all that we hear is 
true, are now to be found fighting on the side oi 
the Allies against the Germanic Powers. 

Within the Austrian State, among the many 
others, there are two nations — the Magyars or 



BOHEMIA. 



I? 



Hungarians, the Bohemians or Czechs — about equal 
in population. The one, the Magyars, have been 
given full, complete, and absolute self-government ; 
they have a full part in the government of the whole 
empire ; the common ministers of war and of foreign 
affairs are jointly responsible to the Austrian and 
Himgarian Parliaments. Why is Bohemia deprived 
of its equal share in the government of an empire 
in which it has an equal stake ? And why is it that 
two millions of this nation, cut off from all association 
with their more fortunate brethren, are held in 
subjection by the Hungarians ? 

The story is told that when the compact was 
made between Austrian and Magyar, by which the 
empire is now governed, an xAustriari statesman said 
to his Hunganan colleague : ''If you look after 
your barbarians, we .will look after ours." Among 
these barbarians were the Czechs and the Slovacs — 
the Czechs assigned to the Austrian portion of the 
Empire, the Slovacs to the Hungarians. But the 
Czechs and Slovacs were no barbarians; they had a 
great university at Prague to which (in the fourteenth 
century) the Germans from the neighbouring districts 
had to go in search of learning. With the German 
conquest it was transformed into a German Univer- 
sity; now it has become once more a centre of 
national thought. In no nation is the number of 
illiterates so small ; it is less among the Czechs 
than among the Germ.an inhabitants of Bohemia. 
If Poland is the country of Chopin, Bohemia 
is the motl^erland of Dvorak. If Copernicus, 
the founder of modern astronomy, w^as a Pole, 
Conmienius, one of the first men who brought 



i8 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



a free and independent judgment to bear on the 
problem of education, was a Bohemian. Needless 
to say he, with many thousands of his fellow- 
countrymen, was driven out by the Germans. 

What the future constitution of the kingdom of 
Bohemia will be it is still too soon to predict. 
This will be one of the most difficult problems with 
which the Peace Conference will have to deal. 
Bohemia is unlike Poland in this, that it has and 
can have no direct access to the sea, and without 
this, as President Wilson has pointed out, it is 
difficult for a nation to enjoy full political and 
economic independence. The proper place of 
Bohemia seems to be perhaps rather that of a 
unit in a friendly confederation of nations, 
associated for mutual defence and joined in an 
economic league. Such a confederation might 
include the Bohemians, the Hungarians, the Southern 
Slavs, and perhaps the Roumanians. It is one of 
the tragedies of history that the House of Austria 
has let slip the opportunity, while there was yet 
time, of establishing this. How different would the 
condition of Europe be if it had been more 
wisely guided, if it had recognised that that great 
Empire could be gradually transformed into a 
free republic of nations ! It has preferred the 
other way. 

The question will then be asked whether it is 
even now too late, whether the constitution of the 
Empire might not so be changed as to provide 
fully for the liberty and self-government of ihe 
Bohemians and of all the other races within the 
Empire. There are many who hoped, even after the 



BOHEMIA. 



19 



ivar had begun, that some solution of this kind 
might be possible ; any such hope seems to have 
been futile — no sign comes from Austria. The 
Emperor has, since the war began, never ventured 
to summon the Austrian Parliament to Vienna. The 
control of Austrian policy and Austrian armies is 
falling more and more into the hands of the 
Germans ; there is no sign within the Em.pire of the 
wideness of view or the force of will which alone could 
preserve it. All that we hear from Vienna points in 
the other direction. The latest proposals for an 
alteration in the Government are that the use of 
the language shall be impeded, that the common 
institutions which the Bohemians in fact enjoy 
shall be broken down, and that Bohemia, instead 
of taking its place in the Austrian federation 
as a single or undivided organic whole, shall be 
broken up into administrative districts. These 
districts will be arranged, as far as possible, so 
as to give the greatest influence to the German 
minority; and those liberties which the Czechs have 
secured by fifty years of perseverance will be wiped 
away. History will not wait ; the patience of the 
subject nations is exhausted ; the years which have 
been allowed to elapse cannot be recalled. 



IV. 



ROUMANIA AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS. 

IN" the Poles and Bohemians we have two ancient 
nations which have been destroyed, deprived of 
their kingdoms, and made subject to ahen rule. 
Very different is the situation of the Roumanians 
and the Southern Slavs. Both these latter peoples 
had been subjected to the Turkish conquest, and for 
many centuries they were obliterated and the whole 
South-East of Europe became a part of the Ottoman 
Empire. But as there spread the decay which 
rapidly set in as soon as the Moslem conquerors 
had gained possession of Constantinople and thereby 
became inheritors of the vices of the Byzantine 
Empire, their Christian subjects began to stir and 
cast off the chains which bound them. In this they 
could look for assistance to the two great Christian 
Empires, the Austrian and the Russian. The 
process was very long, very slow ; rebellion suc- 
ceeded rebellion and war succeeded war, but at 
last there were established subordinate principalities 
which, while acknowledging the suzerainty of the 
Sultan, were freed from the interference of Turkish 
.officials. From those principalities have grown 
the independent kingdoms of Roumania and Serbia, 
both of them in our own days. But things have so 
come about that, unlike Bulgaria, which includes 
within its boundaries practically all those who 
have any claim to Bulgarian nationality, a very 
large portion of the * Roumanian and the Serbian 
race have fallen under the power of the Austrian 



ROUMANIA & THE SOUTHERN SLAVS. 21 



Emperors. The problem here, therefore, is one 
very different from that with which we had to 
d«al in the case of Bohemia and of Poland. It is 
not the creation of a new nor the restoration of an 
ancient kingdom; it is the extension of an existing 
kingdom to its natural boundaries. The kingdom 
of Roumania includes some seven million inhabi- 
tants ; just beyond the border are three million other 
Roumanians. When the kingdom of Roumania 
entered the war, the Government and the people 
were inspired by the one hope that they might 
rejoin to themselves the Roumanians outside the 
kingdom, and, by the annexation of these districts, 
form a greater Roumania, a country large enough to 
hold its own among the smaller States to which it 
would be contiguous. 

The case of Serbia is more difficult for this 
reason — that the Serbians of Serbia are fewer in 
number than those of the same race outside. 
Moreover, we here find a further source of division. 
The Serbian race is divided into two halves, of 
which one belongs to the Eastern Church and uses 
the Russian alphabet ; the other, generally called 
the Croatians, are Roman Catholics and use the 
alphabet common in Western Europe. Again, while 
the majority of the Serbs outside the kingdom are 
inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina — districts 
which have only within the last thirty years been 
freed from Turkish rule — the Croatians have for 
many hundreds of years been united to the 
Hungarian crown, and under Austro-Hungarian 
dominion have enjoyed what, with all its faults, has 
been an orderly and civilised administration. 



22 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



We have, then, two completely different problems: 
on the one hand the union of Serbia with Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, on the other that with Croatia and 
Dalmatia. 

The first is an object which from the beginning 
of the war has been generally recognised as a 
necessar}^ one. Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and 
Herzegovina form a closely connected district, all 
inhabited by one common race, speaking a common 
language, and Bosnia and Herzegovina intervene 
between Serbia and the seaboard. These provinces 
have been under Austrian government for a com- 
paratively short time only, i.e. since 1879, and it 
was not until 1908 that the formal annexation took 
place. It was this annexation which was the origin 
of the present troubles. Until it was completed 
the Serbs had always hoped that in some way or 
other it might be brought about that these provinces 
would be transferred to them ; but formal annexa- 
tion, dissipated these hopes, with the result that 
the whole Serbian race was driven into the most 
intense enmity to the Austrians. This enmity was 
increased when, after the first Balkan war in 1912, the 
Serbians hoped to gain access to the sea. This access 
was forbidden solely owing to the will of Austria. 
Since it became apparent that the superior power of 
Austria was the unchangeable enemy of all Serbian 
aspirations, it was inevitable that Serbia must look 
forward to the first opportunity of helping in some 
blow directed against Austria, the result of which 
would be that her national unity would be secured. 

The Croatian problem is infinitely more difficult, 
and this for two reasons. In the first place, we do 



ROUMANIA & THE SOUTHERN SLAVS. 23 



not know what is the view which the Croatians them- 
selves take of it. During the war all free expression 
of opinion has been impossible. The Croatian 
regiments have fought in the Austrian armies. Have 
they done so willingly, or is there no truth in the 
reports that large bodies of them have passed over 
to the Russians on the field of battle ? We know 
that hundreds of the Croat leaders have been thrown 
into prison or executed, and Croat papers suppressed 
— sure signs that the people no longer acquiesce 
in their present government. On the one hand 
they are bound by many ties to the House of 
Hapsburg, on the other they have been occupied 
for thirty years in an acute struggle with their 
Hungarian masters. More advanced in civilisation, 
they could not be asked to accept simple 
annexation to the kingdom of Serbia ; rather, a 
new state would have to be founded in which there 
might be something of a federal union between 
the Serbian monarchy and a restored kingdom 
of Croatia. But there is another even more serious 
question at stake, for we cannot obscure the fact 
that the union of Serbia and Croatia, whatever form 
it might take, would in fact imply the dissolution 
and destruction of the Austrian Empire. 

This is a problem which the world will have to face. 

I have not spoken of Italy; it is scarcely necessary 
to do so. The Italian claims at least cannot be dis- 
puted ; they are only the completion of that process 
which began in 1848, and of which the stages were 
1859, 1866, 1870. After the Congress of Vienna 
Austria was predominant throughout the whole penin- 
sula ; V^enetia and Lombardy were actually governed 



24 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



from Vienna. The Austrian control has been broken 
down. The kingdom of Italy has taken its place ; 
Lombardy and Venetia have been freed, but the 
process of liberation was not carried out completely. 
The Austrians still maintain their rule over the valleys 
running down from the Alps to the great plain ; the 
Italians justly claim that the frontier shall be 
pushed back to the top of the mountain barrier, 
which is in fact the division between the two nation- 
alities, and that the great city of Trieste, Italian in 
population as in origin, shall be incorporated in the 
Italian kingdom. There may indeed be some diffi- 
culties in determining the precise boundaries on the 
East and the delimitation between the Italian and 
Slavonic States on the Adriatic, but it is not with 
these smaller matters of detail that at present we 
are occupied. It is sufficient to clear our minds with 
regard to the greater principles. 

But this is the important thing to note, that the 
Italian problem is the same in essence as that 
of Roumania and that of Serbia. Each one of them 
implies the separation of considerable districts from 
the Austrian Empire as at present constituted, and 
the total transference of territory, if it were brought 
about, would be so great as to destroy the secular 
position which Austria has held in Europe as one 
of the Great Powers by which international relations 
were determined. 



SOUTH SLAVS AND CENTRAL EUROPE. 



We can all see that the real problem which will be 
presented to the world when the Peace Congress 
meets is not so much what we may call the German 
problem as the Austrian and the Turkish. Not 
the German problem, because, whatever the result 
of the war may be, we can predict this — that 
Germany will remain after the war a sovereign, 
independent, undivided State, shorn it may be of 
one or two districts on the Eastern and the Western 
frontiers, the inhabitants of which have refused to 
consider themselves as German, but in its essential 
features the Germany which we have known in the 
past. There may be, there inevitably will be, profound 
changes in the internal government of the country, 
but these will not be a matter of international 
arrangement. Whether Germany will continue 
to be governed as now, whether the power of the 
Empire will be diminished, whether there will be 
changes in the relations of Prussia to the other 
Federal States, whether even (I do not think this 
will be the case) the monarchical institutions will be 
overthrown and a German Republic established — 
all these are matters for the German nation itself to 
determine. Quite otherwise is it with Austria and 
with Turkey ; for, let us recognise it frankly and 
fully, the peace terms of the AUies imply a 
diminution of territory so great as to amount to a 
disintegration and dissolution of these two Empires 
This has been seized on by German writers who 
do not cease to protest against the extravagant 



26 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



terms suggested by the Allies. They do not cease 
at the same time to protest against proposals for 
the annihilation of Germany, although such pro- 
posals have not and will not be made ; but they 
have some justification for speaking of the annihila- 
tion of Austria and of Turkey, Of Turkey I do 
not propose on this occasion to speak^ and indeed 
what need is there to do so? In America at least 
no voice surely would be heard in defence of an 
empire which since the time of its establishment has 
not made a single contribution, however small, to 
the civilisation and progress of the world ; their 
government hiis been an alternation between sloth, 
indifference, sensuality, and paroxysms of destruc- 
tion and massacre. But Austria is different. With 
all her faults, Austria has been for 300 years one 
of the greatest, proudest and most dignified states 
in the commonwealth of Christendom, and it is the 
government seat at Vienna which has been the 
source of order and authority through all the Valley 
of the Danube. 

The dissolution of Austria, the annihilation of the 
Empire ! Let us look at these expressions from 
another point of view. Destruction is only legitimate 
when it is the condition of a new creation ; we cut 
down a great forest tree only to give freedom of 
growth, air, light, and sunshine to the fruit-growing 
plants which will occupy the ground that it 
leaves free. 

The overthrow of the Empire ! Let us regard 
this not from the point of view of the Government, 
the State, the Army, the Government offices, but 
from the point of view of the men who live under 



SOUTH SLAVS & CENTRAL EUROPE. 27 



their control and protection. Do not matters then 
take on a very different aspect ? 

If we read any typical German discussion as to 
the condition of affairs which they hope to secure at 
the end of the war we shall always find placed in 
the front rank the conception that Eastern Europe 
must be so arranged as to leave open a channel of 
communication, a corridor, a road between Central 
Europe and the sea. They, thinking purely as 
Germans, wish to have open to them access to the 
East for ''exploitation" and the carrying out of 
their grandiose schemes of conquest and civilisation. 
For them, therefore, the Balkans, the peoples, 
races, and districts which intervene between the lands 
of German speech and the derelict countries which 
have been ruined by the Turks, take the form 
merely of so many miles of land intervening 
between them and the objects of their ambition. 
For the German these people have no essential 
right of existence ; all the problems which arise 
in regard to them are reduced to whether or not 
they will make easy the line of communication 
between Germany and Asia. 

When we have said this we have said all that 
need be said. German claims, as Germans them- 
selves make them, are overthrown in the very 
formula in which they are conveyed, for they imply 
this — that there are certain races the greatness and 
prosperity of which is an end in itself, and others 
which only exist for the benefit of the more favoured. 
The establishment of a great kingdom of Serbia, 
of a powerful and extended Roumania, would be 
inconvenient to Germany, because thev would 



28 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



interpose a barrier between Germany and other parts 
of the world. Therefore these States must remain 
small, helpless, dependent for political and commer- 
cial prosperity upon the more powerful German 
nation. 

But the Allies say, and all history will endorse 
what they say, that this is a wrong way to 
envisage the problem. We have not to consider 
whether the existence of* a great Serbia is or is not 
convenient to Germany — that is a matter which is 
completely unimportant; the activity of every nation 
is necessarily conditioned by its geographical 
situation. It has to make the best of the world in 
which it finds itself. Spain is cut off from access 
to the rest of Europe by the interposition of France; 
this was no reason why, as in fact at one time took 
place, the Spaniards should establish control over 
Italy, Western Germany, and the Netherlands, 
and encircle France in a ring of iron. Sweden, shut 
up in her own peninsula, is cut off from Southern 
Europe by the great bulk of Germany ; that is no 
reason why, as once happened, the Swedes should 
secure for themselves a pied-a-terre in Continental 
Europe at the expense of the Germans. This law 
is fundamental ; it is under this law that England 
has for over 300 years consistently refused, even 
though she might easily have acted otherwise, to 
undertake the government of any part of the 
continent of Europe. It is under this law that 
Austria has rightly been driven from the Italian 
Peninsula and that France has been confined to 
her natural frontiers. In the modern world 
Germany, and Germany alone, claims that it shall 



i 



SOUTH SLAVS & CENTRAL EUROPE. 29 



be violated for her sole benefit, and that these 
Slavonic States should be condemned to a position 
of perpetual servitude for the benefit of German 
trade. 

The real problem then is, do the Serbs, whether 
of the kingdom or the neighbouring Austrian 
provinces, exist for their own sake? Is their 
government to be a thing to be tried, as is the 
government of other countries, entirely in reference 
to the people themselves, or is it to be judged in 
reference to its effect upon Germany ? Are Serbia, 
Bulgaria, and Roumania to be looked upon merely 
as a road and corridor between Central Europe and 
the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the JEgesm ? To 
this question there can be but one answer — at least 
in America, for every American who accepts the 
German point of view is thereby guilty of treachery 
to the very principles on which his own state has 
been established. 

We must then, for the moment, put away from our 
minds the problem as it appears to those who live 
at Vienna and at Berlin, and conside' 't purely from 
the point of view of the inhabitant Belgrade, 
Serajevo and Agram. And as soon as we have 
done so, how simple it all becomes ! Here is a great 
country, extending from Monastir to Ragusa and 
Cattaro ; it is inhabited by some fifteen millions of 
people ; from one end to the other there is no 
difference of language as great as that which exists 
between Devonshire and Midlothian ; throughout it 
all men can understand one another ; there is no 
essential difference of rank or class, of nobles or of 
peasants ; the people have the same traditional 



30 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



institutions throughout ; their culture is based on the 
existence of the village community and the undivided 
family, a fact which separates the Slavs from the 
races of Western Europe ; and, if there be a difference 
of religion — for some are Catholic and some are 
Orthodox — it is not greater than that which exists 
between England and Scotland and Ireland. Nowhere 
on the face of the world is there a country of which 
it may be said so definitely that all its people 
should have a common government, and a government 
carried on by men of their own race and in their own 
language. 



VI. 



AUSTRIA. 

I WRITE with no hostility to Austria; there is no 
reason why any Enghshman should feel any ill-will 
towards a State which has again and again been an 
ally of Great Britain in the wars of the past, and 
which has, perhaps alone of all Continental countries, 
never entered into rivalry with her. Austria is the 
one country of which it may be said that it never 
has had in the past and, so far as we can see, will 
not in the future have any objects of ambition which 
would compete with British interests. The part 
which Austria has played in the past has been a 
great one, and in many ways an honourable and 
beneficent. For 200 years she was the bulwark of 
Europe against the Turks, and, notwithstanding all 
the faults of her internal administration, she has 
succeeded in maintaining the essentials of civilised 
government and civilised life among the diverse 
populations over whom she has ruled. This has 
been no easy task. Among the mountains of the 
Carpathians and on the plains of the Middle 
Danube, where Europe verges upon Asia, men of 
different races, languages, and religions live inex- 
tricably mingled together — Roumanian and Magyar, 
German and Ruthenian, Moslem and Jew and 
Slovenian. Here have been slumbering the passions 
of religious and racial animosity, and were the 
strong arm of the Central Government withdrawn, 
^hen, as was in fact seen during the Revolution 
of 1848, tumults and civil war would arise which 
would be fought out on the methods witl^^ which 



32 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



we have become familiar in Macedonia. The 
estabHshment of the strong Austrian Govern- 
ment was perhaps an essential stage during the 
period of transition from Turkish rule to national 
independence, but it was only a period of transition 
and it cannot be perpetuated. It could perhaps have 
continued, but on one condition alone, that the 
Government at Vienna should have realised that 
the Empire must be transformed into a federation 
of free nations, such as Switzerland in fact is, 
in which equal rights would have been given to all. 
They have chosen the other path. A privileged 
position has been granted to the Germans and the 
Magyars, two of the many races of the Empire, 
either of which is a comparatively small minority 
of the whole. In order to support and maintain 
this they have during the last generation learned 
to depend in international policy upon the German 
Empire, so that the great strength, military and 
economic, of Germany has been used to maintain 
a form of government in Austria and in Hungary 
which, if the Empire had stood alone in the world,, 
would have collapsed long ago. The result of 
this has been that Austria has steadily declined 
from the great and independent European position 
which it once occupied — it has become affiliated 
to Germany. Attempts have been made now and 
again to reassert its freedom of movement ; they 
have always failed, and Austria has come to heel. 
It had become a brilliant second ^' to Germany. 
After the war this process would inevitably con- 
tinue further; closer bonds of union, commercial 
and military, would be established, and even though 



AUSTRIA. 



33 



Germany were defeated in the war she would 
emerge stronger than ever, because the authority 
which emanates from Berhn would in fact rule as 
far as the Adriatic. There was room in Europe 
for an independent Austria ; there is no place for 
an Austria which has become a junior partner in 
the great firm of Central Europe. 

During the war we have looked to see if there 
were any sign of a rejuvenation of Austria ; there is 
none. Hungary remains as it was before — virile, 
warlike, ruthless — but the Austrian armies are 
fighting under German generals ; it is the support 
of Germany alone by which the resistance of the 
Empire is still bolstered up ; the Government at 
Vienna remains indolent, corrupt, wanting in 
initiative, blind to the great problems of the 
future. We look to Austria for- some response 
and we get none. The old Austria has in truth 
disappeared. 

But if this old independent Austria has gone, 
then it is essential that there should be built up in its 
place new States large enough to be self-dependent. 
This can only be done by creating a large South 
Slavonic State which would intervene between Ger- 
many on the one side, the Adriatic and the y^^gean 
on the other. This, entering as we may hope into 
some federal union, not only with Roumania but 
also with Hungary and Bulgaria, will form a solid 
block which will for the first time give to the inhabi- 
tants of these regions that political power, military 
and commercial strength, which, owing to the mis- 
fortunes of their history, they have been for so long 
denied. • 



34 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



Do not let us be foolishly optimistic. Let us 
not ignore the profound difficulties which confront 
Europe in the settlement of these great problems. 
Whatever the issue of the war may be, it is no easy 
task to destroy and to create States, to establish a 
centre of government where none has existed before, 
to create order out of chaos, to build up armies and 
courts of justice and administrative departments and 
all the paraphernalia of government, and to ensure 
that the orders which they issue shall be obeyed and 
that the administration which they create shall be 
effective. If this is difficult at any time, much more 
so w^ill it be when these countries have been for 
three years exposed to the worst ravages of warfare, 
when the towns and villages are lying in ruins, 
when the population is decimated by disease and 
starvation, when all the habits of civilised life have 
ceased. 

It is easy enough to talk of creating a Polish 
State, a Bohemian State, and a great South Slav 
State, but long and difficult will be the course 
that has to be run before it has been achieved 
in practice. It may well be that we find that the 
full achievement is indeed at this time impossible. 
We cannot at one stroke completely solve problems 
which are inherited from centuries of aggression and 
misgovernment. It will indeed take generations to 
undo the mistakes of the past and the disasters of 
the present. But even if we recognise this, we 
will also recognise that it makes all the difference 
whether we start in the right or in the wrong 
direction. There are certain great principles of 
government which never can cease to be true. If 



AUSTRIA 



35 



we grasp them firmly and guide our course by them 
every step will lead in the right direction. We can 
take an example from the past. At the Congress 
of Vienna one hundred years ago Europe was con- 
fronted by a similar situation ; then it chose the wrong- 
course. It neglected the sound and eternal principles 
of statesmanship ; it ignored the rights of the peoples, 
the aspirations of the nations, and cared only for 
the rulers and the States. What was the result ? 
It has taken a hundred years of revolution and 
warfare to undo what was then done and to set 
Europe once more upon the right course. Belgium, 
Germany, Italy — in each of these countries the 
settlement of Vienna has been overthrown, and it 
w^as right that it should be overthrown. But how 
much did the effort cost ! W^hat was the loss to 
Europe of the wasted years before the effort was 
successful ! Now we have to do not with the 
Western but the Eastern lands of Europe ; now 
we have the same problem before us. How are 
we going to approach it ? Are we to start from 
the kings and the rulers of the existing States, the 
kingdom of Prussia, the Russian Czardom, the 
Austrian Empire ? These indeed are the entities of 
which diplomacy in the past has taken note. For a 
hundred years it has been the constant cry of all 
who have called themselves Liberal that diplomacy 
should recognise not rulers but peoples, and this 
means that the new settlement of Europe should ask 
itself, not how much territory has to be awarded to 
Germany, to Russia, to Austria, but how are the 
Poles, the Bohemians, the Croatians, the Rou- 
manians to be governed? In truth the terms of the 



36 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE. 



Allies, in that they have taken note of this, will 
always form one of the greatest landmarks in 
European history. We need not therefore be dis- 
couraged if our new Poland, our new Bohemia, our 
new South Slavia does not, either in the nature of 
its institutions or in the delimitation of territory, 
precisely meet the demands of every idealist. It 
would be sufficient if we laid the foundation-stones 
on which future generations will build. The world 
will not cease to progress ; all that matters is that 
it should move in the right direction. It is for us 
to give the direction. 



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